one interpretation of philosophy is that the questions of philosophy are actually
meaningless… it doesn’t matter or is unimportant what is
the meaning of life… those questions that keep us up at night,
are meaningless questions that have no answers and are pointless to ask…
that is one point of view…that philosophy has no relevance in the world…
science tells us that the sun is 93 million miles away from earth
philosophy tells us WHY that is important…science tells us how,
philosophy tells why and that is the value of philosophy…
because all question of humanity are covered by these little words,
who, what, when, where, how and why…
is philosophy meaningless?
I believe that the most important questions in life are about the “Why”
and not about the who, what, when, where and how…
a child asking his dad, “why is the sky blue” is a philosopher
and a child asking her dad, “where do babies come from” is a philosopher…
they want to know not only how, but they want to know why…
and we spend years stopping children from asking these inconvenient
questions because we hate to admit we don’t know, why…
Why do people die? a child’s question and yet, so important…
the big question are important because they provide us with reference…
for example… we have facts such as the earth is 93 million miles from earth
and the earth distance from the mars is 206 million miles and the distance from
the earth to Venus is 27 million miles and then we add mercury and that is 100 million miles
(right now)… and from these facts with the knowledge that we revolve around the sun
and you can create a map of the inner solar system from this knowledge, from these facts…
and still you can’t answer the question of, why?
but these questions provide us with a reference point, we can grasp where we are
in the universe and that oftentimes is the point of these questions, to gain an
understanding of where we are in the universe… and we do this in terms of
our place in human society… I am middle class America and that identifies me
into a certain place in society… much of our knowledge is simple to identify
our place in society and our place on earth and our place in the universe …
our knowledge is simple a marker for where we are in the universe…
I am a philosopher and that is a marker for my place in the universe…
it identifies my place within society for me and for others…
and in some respects this answers the questions of why philosophy
is important and why the so called “meaningless” questions of philosophy
are actually meaningful… because the “why” answers to our questions also
marks our place in the universe…who, what, when, where, how and why, are
simply questions that identifies the location of people, time, events and the how…
those simple questions are a means of locating things… locations that are
identify by space, time, people, relationships and the reason of their existence…
this idea of knowing our relationship to the universe is very important to people…
we need to know where exactly we exist in the universe and thus
questions deemed to be “meaningless” actually have a great deal of meaning because
they are used to place us in context of the universe…“why” questions are just
another means of creating context for human beings…“why do we exist”
that is just another question that creates context for us… it is important to
know our context in the universe … thus there are no such things as “meaningless”
questions… every question asked creates context for us and creates a spot
in the universe for us…
Kropotkin